Education & Knowledge quotes for UPSC & State PCS

For knowledge itself is power.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Critical perception cannot be imposed.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog.

Learning implies a mind that doesn't know.

When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil.

As long as I live, so long do I learn. (1036)

Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

You have to study a great deal to know a little.

Where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime.

Poor is the pupil that does not surpass his master.

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.

Nothing is more frightful than to see ignorance in action.

Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.

He who reads much and walks much sees much and knows much.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

The roots of education ... are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.

Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.

For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.

Ordinarily men exercise their memory much more than their judgment.

The best brains of a nation may be in the last bench of a classroom.

For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.

Do not read so much, look about you and think of what you see there.

You really only know when you know little. Doubt grows with knowledge.

In life, there's nothing to be feared, everything is to be understood.

We democratic teachers engage with the world by cultivating curiosity.

One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Resolve to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books.

We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation.

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

...the more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.

A vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

It seems to me that the dedication of a library is in itself an act of faith.

The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task.

Skills are called hidden treasure as they save like a mother in a foreign country.

Lack of education leads to lack of wisdom; lack of wisdom leads to lack of morals.

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.

A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength.

The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something to-morrow which I never saw before.

Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.

Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Whoever enters the Way without a guide will take a hundred years to travel a two-day journey.

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me.

Without love the acquisition of knowledge only increases confusion and leads to self-destruction.

There is no greater weapon than knowledge and no greater source of knowledge than the written word.

What I cannot create, I do not understand. ...Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.

Nothing is infallible. Nothing is binding forever. Everything is Subject to inquiry and examination.

I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.

Every new set of discoveries raises a host of questions which we were never before wise enough even to ask.

To be ignorant is not the special prerogative of man; to know that he is ignorant is his special privilege.

I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.

If you ask me what I want to achieve, it's to create an awareness, which is already the beginning of teaching.

Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if 5 September is observed as Teachers' Day.

My father says that education is neither Eastern or Western. Education is education: it's the right of everyone.

Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind.

A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

The true purpose of education is to prepare young men and women for effective citizenship in a free form of government.

Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead:—The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.

That knowledge which purifies the mind and heart alone is true Knowledge, all else is only a negation of Knowledge. (138)

Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world and is a powerful part of that world changing arsenal.

I keep six honest serving-men: (They taught me all I knew) Their names are What and Where and When And How and Why and Who.

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man. Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

So the idea of being able to explain something in a succinct form is such a cool thing, and it requires you to know a field so well.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master at some point, and in that, I learn of him.

The unfinished character of human beings and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.

A fool associating himself with a wise man all his life sees not the truth, even as the spoon enjoys not the taste of the soup. (Verse 64)

One is not a learned man by virtue of much speaking. He who is patient, without anger and fearless, he is to be called learned. (Verse 258)

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in.

Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing.

To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practice with vigor is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy.

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being, whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all he has to get knowledge.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring: There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.

Don't tell us that the only way to teach a child is to spend too much of a year preparing him to fill out a few bubbles on a standardized test; we know that's not true.

Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.

What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

Rewards and punishments, to speak frankly, are the desk of the soul, that is, a means of enslaving a child's spirit, and better suited to provoke than to prevent deformities.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

There is no outward mark of politeness that does not have a profound moral reason. The right education would be that which taught the outward mark and the moral reason together.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future.

Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.

What we must learn to do is to create unbreakable bonds between the sciences and the humanities. We cannot procrastinate. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable, learning what to choose and what not to choose.

We believe that, ultimately, the most important learning occurs in the context of our day-to-day life, the aspirations we pursue, the challenges we face, and the responses we bring forth.

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.

I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.

We meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Man achieves in life only by commanding the capabilities nature has given him, or by creating them within himself by education and by knowing how to profit by the difficulties encountered.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

Books, like conversation, rarely give us any precise ideas: nothing is so common as to read and converse unprofitably. We must here repeat what Locke has so strongly urged—Define your terms.

No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest—for it is a part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.

The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.

Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.

The most important thing I found out from [my father] is that if you asked any question and pursued it deeply enough, then at the end there was a glorious discovery of a general and beautiful kind.

Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.

Investing in people is the single most important thing in the knowledge economy. Traditionally, wealth was defined by land and natural resources. Today the most important resources is between our ears.

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

If thou wouldst have humanity advance, buffet all preconceived ideas. Thought thus smitten awakes and becomes creative. Otherwise it rests in a mechanical repetition and mistakes that for its right activity.

Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.

That is why I say to any beginner: Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories, but your own creative individuality alone must decide.

Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.

He that in his studies wholly applies himself to labour and exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time, and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labour and exercise, only wanders and loses himself.

They should always be heard, and fairly and kindly answer'd, when they ask after any thing they would know, and desire to be informed about. Curiosity should be as carefully cherish'd in children, as other appetites suppress'd.

The young bamboo can be easily bent, but the full grown bamboo breaks when it is bent with force. It is easy to bend the young heart towards God, but the untrained heart of the old escapes the hold whenever it is so drawn. (233)

In war, theory is all right so far as general principles are concerned; but in reducing general principles to practice there will always be danger. Theory and practice are the axis about which the sphere of accomplishment revolves.

The division of labor, which has brought such perfection in mechanical industries, is altogether fatal when applied to productions of the mind. All work of the mind is superior in proportion as the mind that produces it is universal.

...education is the key to health and to social progress. The fact is that the average expectation of life of an Indian has doubled since Independence. In fact, it is 61 years now as against 28 or 30 years at the time of Independence.

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.

The future of any country which is dependent upon the will and wisdom of its citizens is damaged, and irreparably damaged, whenever any of its children is not educated to the full extent of his talent, from grade school through graduate school.

It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place.

All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open.

Mother is the first Guru to a child. Then comes father. Later, he who gives knowledge is the Guru. After that comes the Guru who teaches the secret of a good life and of true happiness. Last of all, when wisdom comes, one is a Guru unto oneself.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

To design something really well you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something — chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted. (11 May 1943)

A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.

Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody - will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday, and will expect equivalent opportunities. That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man.

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

It is unwise to make education too cheap. If everything is provided freely, there is a tendency to put no value on anything. Education must always have a certain price on it; even as the very process of learning itself must always require individual effort and initiative.

The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science and Physics?

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.

Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheapjacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of affairs about us.

Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication. If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.

Every man shall be entitled to a sound and objective education and there shall be genuine equality of opportunity. Education shall be a matter of environment as well as of instruction, and everyone shall be entitled to an education untouched by the interests of any party or religion.

Many people think they cannot have knowledge or understanding of God without reading books. But hearing is better than reading, and seeing is better than hearing. Hearing about Benares is different from reading about it; but seeing Benares is different from either hearing or reading.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.

The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit.

I believe that the crazy combative patriotism that plainly threatens to destroy civilisation to-day is very largely begotten by the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress in their history lessons. They take the growing mind at a naturally barbaric phase and they inflame and fix its barbarism.

Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.

I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.

We speak glibly of conservation education, but what do we mean by it? If we mean indoctrination, then let us be reminded that it is just as easy to indoctrinate with fallacies as with facts. If we mean to teach the capacity for independent judgement, then I am appalled by the magnitude of the task.

Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.

The best teachers still taught in a Socratic style, asking questions, responding to the answers with still another question. And in all of our courses, we were taught that what mattered most was asking the right question — having posed the question well, answering the question was often a relatively easy matter.

We are deeply concerned, both in our country and here, of the very large number of dropouts by schoolchildren. This is a very disturbing situation, because the youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow... try as much as possible to remain in school, because education is the most powerful weapon which we can use.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called 'the greatest evil in the world.' The friction which results from ignorance ... can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.

A good teacher knows that the best way to help students learn is to allow them to find the truth by themselves. Students don't learn by a mere transfer of knowledge, consumed through rote memorization and later regurgitated. True learning comes about through the discovery of truth, not through the imposition of an official truth.

Language is the dress of thought.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

There shall be no slavery of the mind.

Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.

Love is the greatest advantage a parent can give.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

A woman who is denied an education is denied equality.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.

A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

The best antidote for pseudoscience, I firmly believe, is science.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

He who does not speak foreign languages knows nothing about his own.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

I think people in power have a vested interest to oppose critical thinking.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day [sic] thinking.

Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.

Time ripens all things. No man is born wise. Bishops are made of men and not of stones.

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

Besides, he who follows another not only discovers nothing but is not even investigating.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.

Human resources are the most valuable assets the world has. They are all needed desperately.

Traveling through different countries and communicating with different peoples makes men wise.

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

All of us must recognise that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st Century.

All of us do not have equal talent. But, all of us have an equal opportunity to develop our talents.

It is important to distinguish between the amount of information and the quality of that information.

Ignorance in other men may be censured as idleness, in an academick it must be abhorred as treachery.

The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known.

Lead us from the unreal to the real. Lead us from darkness to light. Lead us from death to immortality.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

We look down on our scientists if they engage in outside consultation. We implicitly promote the ivory tower.

The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind.

Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas.

Where we find a difficulty we may always expect that a discovery awaits us. Where there is cover we hope for game.

Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they’re defeated by better ideas -- a more attractive and compelling vision.

I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow, and I have borrowed a lot since I read it to you first.

The main contribution one can make as a student to one's country in peace or wartime is to study hard and effectively.

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

We live under majority rule and if that majority is not well educated in its responsibilities, the whole Nation suffers.

Society presses upon us all the time. The progress of the last half century is the progress of the frog out of his well.

The true wealth of a nation consists not in the stored- up gold but in the intellectual and physical strength of its people.

For such is the work of philosophy: it cures souls, draws off vain anxieties, confers freedom from desires, drives away fears.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

Votes should be weighed, not counted. Sooner or later, the state will be wrecked In which majority rules, and ignorance decides.

Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

Though the theory is worthless without the well-observed facts, the facts are useless without the frame of the theory to receive them.

Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use.

Lessing, the most honest of theoretical men, dared to say that he took greater delight in the quest for truth than in the truth itself.

This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits.

What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.

Where you have the will you have the skill; study, search, practice application; healthy irreverence; look for the kink in the thing, be curious.

The torch that the Turkish nation holds in her hand and in her mind, while marching on the road of progress and civilisation, is positive sciences.

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

The idea of science as a method rather than as a body of knowledge is not widely appreciated outside of science, or indeed in some corridors inside of science.

One cannot attain divine knowledge till one gets rid of pride. Water does not stay on the top of a mound; but into low land it flows in torrents from all sides.

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.

The wrongs done to trees, wrongs of every sort, are done in the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, for when the light comes, the heart of the people is always right.

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue — it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.

Man has three ways of acting wisely. First, on meditation; that is the noblest. Secondly, on imitation; that is the easiest. Thirdly, on experience; that is the bitterest.

Look at the resplendent colours on the soap bubbles! Why is the sea blue? What makes diamond glitter! Ask the right questions, and nature will open the doors to her secrets

The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems. Fighting is useless. Suicide.

The Scientific Revolution... has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery... was... that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.

nobody knows the solution to every problem; rather than blindly following the prescriptions of others, Africans need to think and act for themselves, and learn from their mistakes.

Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a previous age?

‘When we take people,’ thou wouldst say, ‘merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.’

There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

The arts in every field — music, drama, sculpture, painting — we can learn to appreciate and enjoy. We need not be artists, but we should be able to appreciate the work of artists. (5 November 1958)

If I am something of a social leveller, it is not because I want to give silly people a good time, but because I want to make opportunity universal, and not leave out one single being who is worth while.

Life without Liberty is like a body without spirit. Liberty without thought is like a disturbed spirit … Life, liberty, and thought — three persons in one substance, eternal, never-ending, and unceasing.

We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another.

We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.

Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important for them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school.

The duty of the scholar, of the educated man, of the man or woman whom society has developed talents in, the duty of that man or woman is to help build the society which has made their own advancement possible.

Some people do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions; and conclusions are not always pleasant. They are a thorn in the spirit. But I consider it a priceless gift and a deep responsibility to think.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.

It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.

We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a man's duty to understand his world rather than simply fight for it.

For certainly it is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them.

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.

You've got to be willing to read other people's code, and then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong...

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.

The crop of spiritual talent that is born to you, of human nobleness and intellect and heroic faculty, this is infinitely more important than your crops of cotton or corn, or wine or herrings or whale-oil, which the Newspapers record with such anxiety every season.

The insight does not arise if we are not familiar with the facts of the case... The successful practice of intuition requires previous study and assimilation of a multitude of facts and laws. We may take it that great intuitions arise out of a matrix of rationality.

I appeal to all pupils, students and young people, asking you to focus on the horizons that are opening up for you, and which you could only dream of a year ago. Our future will depend on your desire for education and moral values as well as on your entrepreneurial spirit.

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next...

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The Spartans meanwhile, man to man, and with their war songs in the ranks, exhorted each brave comrade to remember what he had learned before; well aware that the long training of action was of more use for saving lives than any brief verbal exhortation, though ever so well delivered.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

The arts alone give direct access to experience. To eliminate them from education - or worse, to tolerate them as cultural ornaments - is antieducational obscurantism. It is foisted on us by the pedants and snobs of Hellenistic Greece who considered artistic performance fit only for slaves...

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory.

The greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly than an inconceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruction in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from everybody, and do anything that anybody asks, so long as it involves only toil, or what other men would think degradation.

The most important, the most fundamental and the deepest investigations are those that affect human life and activities most profoundly. Only those scientists who have laboured, not with the aim of producing this or that, but with the sole desire to advance knowledge ultimately prove to be the greatest benefactors of humanity.

The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies and biographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim and example, not syllogism or theorem.